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Of ice and men

Marcelo Ebrard: An urban visionary and his not so closely watched trainsFrom the Star's Unforgettable Encounters series: During six years as mayor of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard worked wonders — but who will remember that now?

Many years later, as I face the firing squad, what I’ll most remember about Marcelo Ebrard is the time he talked to me about ice.

Granted, ice was not what brought the 55-year-old political visionary to Toronto. He had come to speak about the transformational promise of cities, a subject he knows well.

After all, Ebrard spent six years — 2006 to 2012 — as mayor of Mexico City, the largest urban conglomeration in the Americas, a benighted megalopolis many have written off as an urban disaster zone.

Not Ebrard.

During his mandate, the city’s air quality improved, its crime rate fell, the high-school dropout rate declined. Ebrard legalized same-sex marriage in the capital region, lifted restrictions on abortion and condoned euthanasia in some circumstances. He even launched a successful bike-sharing program.

Bespectacled and possessed of pliant, animated features, Ebrard was accompanied on his Toronto trip by his third wife, Rosalinda Bueso, the former Honduran ambassador to Mexico. We met at O&B Canteen, the casual restaurant at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on King St. West on a frigid but cloudless afternoon in February. I pulled out my notebook and began to pepper the visitor with questions, mostly about cities, their challenges and opportunities. I scribbled down his invariably earnest and thoughtful replies, rendered all the more compelling because Ebrard was nearly certain to seek his country’s presidency in 2018, with a decent prospect of winning — or so it seemed at the time.

Nowadays — paraphrasing an Al Gore quip — you would have to call him the man who used to be the next president of Mexico.

A month after we spoke, Ebrard’s presidential aspirations pretty much collapsed.

The problem was an urban one — subways.

With little more than a month remaining in his mayoralty, Ebrard inaugurated what was to be his crowning physical accomplishment as chief magistrate — Line 12 of the city’s extensive if troubled subway system.

The Golden Line, Ebrard called it.

Completed at a reported cost of $2 billion (U.S.), the new route boasted 20 stations along its 26-kilometre length and was supposed to slash commute times in half. Ebrard undoubtedly hoped the newly unveiled transportation link would help propel him to the presidency.

Apparently, the undercarriage of the newly purchased trains was not fully compatible with the tracks, a problem that could lead to derailment.

Only too eager to claim credit for the subway line’s anticipated success, Ebrard now finds himself in a poor position to blame others for its failure, which is not to say he hasn’t tried, insisting that none of his underlings warned him of an impending problem.

Meanwhile, ever since the trains stopped running, suspicions of graft have swirled around the disused tracks of Line 12. Ebrard has been categorical on that score. “I have never been corrupt,” he has tweeted — a declaration that, while possibly true, may not be helping his cause. (See Richard Nixon: “I am not a crook.”)

For all his achievements as mayor, it is likely that Ebrard will now be labelled as the man who presided over the fiasco of Line 12, although some may also remember him in connection with ice. I know I will.

At Christmas in 2007, Ebrard ordered that a huge ice-skating rink be erected in Mexico City’s main plaza, known as the Zocalo, with skates available for rent and with free access for all, a whimsical innovation he repeated in the ensuing years.

Why?

During our conversation, Ebrard explained that Mexicans in December are bombarded by the same wintry images that dominate the Christmas season in the United States, Canada and Europe, and yet most Mexicans have never experienced ice and snow — and never will.

“We should think of the 85 per cent of the population that can never go to the U.S. or Canada or Europe,” he said. “These are symbols about how to deal with ‘community’ in an unequal society ... I believe the ultimate purpose of government is to show that you as a citizen belong to something larger and that you have access to rights, liberties, security.”

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